Q. Why can't I see my gene of interest?
A. This may be due to a number of factors including inadequate sequencing read depth (single-cell libraries may not have been sequenced enough) or low expression of the gene. Ability to detect a transcript may also be affected by the data processing pipeline.
Q. Do the relative proportions of cell populations within the datasets reflect relative proportions that are actually in the tissue?
A. No. Single-cell data is a poor representation of true cell proportions in cardiovascular tissues. This is because cell or nucleus dissocation/extraction protocols or data analysis pipelines lead to under-representation of specific cell types.
Q. Why are there only a limited number of datasets?
A. We have deliberately limited the number of datasets in the current iteration of CLARA. We decided this due to: (i) not having access to raw data at the time of preparing this version of the portal; (ii) unsatisfactory data quality; (iii) and/or other technical considerations. In the future we will add more datasets and types of single-cell genomic data (for example, ATAC-seq analyses) to CLARA.
Q. More questions?
A. Please contact us.